Out of the Ashes

Out of the Ashes
The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein

Andrew Cockburn
Patrick Cockburn

HarperCollins

The world has changed since 1990. The cold war has ended, the Soviet Union has disappeared, new governments have taken power in Washington and around the globe. But one familiar, dreaded face still looms over the international landscape—that of Saddam Hussein.
At the end of the Gulf War, the White House was confident that the Iraqi dictator’s days were numbered. His army had been routed, his country had been bombed back into a preindustrial age, his subjects were in bloody revolt, his borders were sealed. It seemed impossible that he could survive such disasters. World leaders waited confidently for the downfall of the pariah of Baghdad.

Almost a decade later, they are still waiting.
This is the first in-depth account of what went wrong. Drawing on the authors’ first hand experiences on the ground inside Iraq (often under fire) and their interviews with key players—ranging from members of Saddam’s own family to senior officials of the CIA— Out of the Ashes tells what happened when the smoke cleared from the battlefields of the Gulf War. Leaders of the uprising that almost toppled the dictator describe the desperate mission they undertook to plead for American help and how they were turned away. We learn of Saddam’s secret plan to fool and corrupt the UN weapons inspectors and how the scheme initially went awry. Senior U.S. intelligence officials explain what they really thought of the Iraqi opposition movement they helped to create. An agent on the CIA payroll recounts his exploits planting bombs in Baghdad.

While U.S. officials grappled with the ongoing crisis of Saddam’s survival, the Iraqi leader himself presided over a regime dominated by his own terrifying family. Here is the full story of that family— “animals,” as one former intimate describes them— and its vicious feuds, including the downfall of the man who once stood at Saddam’s right hand.
This tale of high drama, labyrinthine intrigue, and fatal blunders has been played out amid one of the greatest man-made tragedies of our times. At the outset, U.S. leaders resolved that “Iraqis will pay the price”* so long as Saddam Hussein remains in power. Out of the Ashes makes chillingly clear just how terrible that price has been.

*“Robert M. Gates, Deputy National Security Adviser (May 7, 1991).

Patrick Cockburn has been a senior Middle East correspondent for the Financial Times and the London Independent since 1979. Among the most experienced commentators on Iraq, he was one of the few journalists to remain in Baghdad during the Gulf War. He is currently based in Jerusalem for the Independent.

Andrew Cockburn is the author of several books on defense and international affairs. He has also written about the Middle East for The New Yorker and coproduced the 1991 PBS documentary on Iraq titled “The War We Left Behind.” He lives in Washington, D.C.

Contents

Acknowledgments / xiii

1. Saddam at the Abyss / 3
2. “We Have Saddam Hussein Still Here” / 31
3. The Origins of Saddam Hussein / 58
4. Saddam Fights for His Long Arm / 86
5. “Iraqis Will Pay the Price” / 114
6. Uday and the Royal Family / 140
7. Intrigue in the Mountains / 164
8. Deaths in the Family / 191
9. “Bring Me the Head of Saddam Hussein” / 211
10. Saddam Moves North / 231
11. Uday Takes a Hit / 251
12. Endgame / 263

Postscript / 287

Notes / 291

Index / 311

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book has been made possible by the insights, advice, and kindnesses of many people over the years we have covered Iraq. To name them all would be impossible and, in the case of some, unwise. We must however extend special thanks to our editor Terry Karten for her patience, loyalty, and unwavering eye for a redundancy as well as to her indefatigable assistant, Megan Barrett. Our agent, Elizabeth Kaplan, was there when we needed her. Faith Rubenstein performed invaluable service on the research front.

Out of the Ashes

One

Saddam at the Abyss

Fifty miles from the capital, returning Iraqi soldiers could already see the black cloud over the blazing al-Dohra oil refinery on the edge of Baghdad. It was early March 1991, and these exhausted men were the remnants of the huge army sent to occupy Kuwait after its conquest by Saddam Hussein the previous year. Now, routed by the United States and its allies, they were in the last stages of a three-hundred-mile flight from the battlefields. They were crowded into taxis, trucks, battered buses—anything on wheels. One group clung desperately to a car transporter.

Soon they were inside the city, only to find it utterly changed. Just six weeks before, the low-lying Iraqi capital on the banks of the Tigris had been a rich modem city, built with the billions of dollars flowing from the third-largest oil reserves in the world. Expressways and overpasses sped traffic past gleaming modem hotels, government buildings, and communications centers.
Lavishly equipped hospitals gave the citizens medical care as good as could be found in Europe or the United States. Even the poor were used to eating chicken once a day. Then, beginning at 3:00 A.M. on January 17, precisely targeted bombs and missiles had thrust Baghdad and its 3.5 million inhabitants abruptly back into the third world.
…..

Andrew Cockburn
Patrick Cockburn

Out of the Ashes
The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein

Harper Collins

Harper Collins Publishers
Out of the Ashes
The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein
Andrew Cockburn
Patrick Cockburn

Out of the ashes. Copyright © 1999 by Andrew and Patrick Cockburn.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
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First Edition
Designed by Kris Tobaissen
Map by Paul J. Pugliese
ISBN 0-06-019266-6
99 00 01 02 03 ❖/RRD 10 987654321

Jacket design © 1999 by Marc Cohen
Jacket photographs: large © Sygma,
inset © Gamma-Liaison
Author photographs: top © 1999 by Ariel Jerozolimski,
bottom © 1999 by Leslie Cockburn

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